


Side Effects

by arsenicarcher (Arsenic)



Series: Unknown-verse [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:50:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/arsenicarcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Slight miscommunications are when bases burn down, Director, not when you infect Captain America with what is evidently, instead of an anti-toxin, an aphrodisiac on Asgardian steroids."</p>
<p>"For the record, the anti-toxin portion works, this is an unfortunate side effect."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Side Effects

**Author's Note:**

  * For [luuv2shop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luuv2shop/gifts).



> Thank you to egelantier for the alpha read, this is unbeta'ed.
> 
> For the "sex pollen" square on my hc_bingo square.
> 
> I have tagged this "mildly dubious consent" just to really cover all my bases, since it is sex pollen, but the people in this fic are in an established, loving relationship and all have no problem having sex with each other. They would just prefer to do it under other circumstances.

It takes Maria two hours to get to the Playground and she knows she's beaten Natasha. Steve is going to be a _mess._ Fuck.

Once she's inside, Phil meets her at the door, with the best look of this-is-not-my-life combined with shame she's ever seen and if _anything_ else were happening, she'd probably find it amazing. Later, she will mock him mercilessly, because holy shit if she doesn't deserve that at the very least. He's the Director, though, so she refrains from stripping his skin off with her tongue and instead only asks, "Where is he?"

"We put him in a containment room. He was very gracious about it, considering."

Yeah, that's Steve, gracious even when infected by an air-release anti-toxin test gone terribly wrong. Maria resists the urge to growl. "Why was he even in the same room when this was going on?"

"There might have been a slight miscommunication between my team," Phil admits.

"Slight miscommunications are when bases burn down, Director, not when you infect Captain America with what is evidently, instead of an anti-toxin, an aphrodisiac on Asgardian steroids."

"For the record, the anti-toxin portion works, this is an unfortunate side effect."

"See how that works with my wife when she gets here, why don't you?" Maria asks and moves past him. "Now show me where he is, so I can maybe get him calmed down a little before that happens."

Natasha has most of her sexual triggers under control, but Maria doesn't want to find out what happens if you put her in a room with a chemically-induced sexually-ravenous super-soldier, even if it _is_ Steve. At least not one who's been waiting for over two hours.

When she gets into the room they've got him in, however, he's tucked himself between the bed and the wall, making himself as small as possible. He looks up the second she comes in—he's still got solid sight lines, go figure—and says, "Sex pollen is not a thing. This is not some temporal-cultural misunderstanding, it's not a thing."

"No," she agrees. "Not a thing."

"You should go. They shouldn't have called you."

"Too late for any of that. Stark's got his jet flying Natasha in from Paris, so you have to put up with us whether you like it or not." Stark's going to nag her about the favor all week, but Stark worries that if he doesn't nag and do favors, people will forget he's there. Maria's learning to just give him some attention, it tends to work wonders.

"I don't know that I won't hurt you," Steve says, sounding small and terrified.

"You might have noticed that Nat and I can hold our own pretty well."

"Maria—"

"We're not leaving you alone, Steve."

"This isn't—this wasn't something you bargained on when we all—"

Maria rolls her eyes. "Much like you didn't bargain on that time you woke Nat up from a nightmare and she broke your cheekbone for the favor. Or the times you've had to escort me to Stark's black-tie events."

Steve frowns. "That's not the same."

"Is from where I'm standing, so c'mon, hot stuff. Let's get you naked and see if we can't take the edge off."

Steve goes white and stiffens at the word "naked." He goes limp after a few seconds, "I've tried that. A few times."

Maria pulls her top off and walks toward him. "We're gonna try it a different way."

*

She gets him on the bed, on his back, and puts her hands on his stomach, underneath his t-shirt for a moment. His skin is slick with sweat and he shudders so hard she finds herself saying, "Shh, all right, I'm here," even though he hasn't said anything. "I've got you."

His jeans are already unbuttoned, so she slips them down his hips and pulls his boxers down as well. She frames his hips with her hands and doesn't waste time, just deepthroats him for all she's worth. He _screams_ a little before he catches himself and she comes off of him. "Jesus, Steve—"

"I'm okay. I'm—please, I can't—"

"Okay, babe, okay," she says, and goes back down on him. Despite everything, in that moment, it's just a little bit sweet. She likes it when he's desperate beneath her, his cock hot and heavy, curved just right. For his sake, because he's not just getting started, the way she is, she doesn't bother with creative or fancy, even if the thought occurs to her, just gets him off as quickly as possible.

He sobs a little on the comedown, when instead of getting a few seconds rest, he just stays hard. Shakily, he tells her, "I think the serum might be making a bad thing worse."

She crawls up and curls around him as best she can. He's bigger than her, but she's got a lot of length in her limbs. It's comforting, for the moment, containing him in this way. "Well," she kisses his forehead, "for better or worse, right?"

"You promised Nat that," he mumbles, his eyes closed. Then, in the silence afterward, his eyes shoot open. "Fuck, I didn't mean that."

"If you want us to marry you, Steve, I am fine with being the next test case for polygamy, but I think how we've structured things is solid enough without a piece of paper."

Steve buries his face in her chest, kissing at the space between her breasts. "This is a terrible, no good, very bad day."

She arches into the kisses. "Did you raid the kid's section at the library?"

It gets him to laugh, just a huff, but it's something. "Bruce read it to the kids at Mt. Sinai last week, when I went with him."

"Ah," Maria says. Then, "How're you doing?"

The heavy quality of his breathing is response enough. Maria reaches down and curls her fingers around his cock, planning to go easy this time. He's familiar under her touch, and it would almost be sweet if it took more than a stroke to bring him off.

Maria caresses his hip. "There you go, I've got you."

He kisses his way up her sternum and throat, bringing his lips to hers. He says, "You're beautiful," and with him, his bloody earnest eyes and tone, it means no less for the fact that he's rubbing himself off against her thigh.

*

Natasha finally arrives three hours later, and Maria has never been so happy to see her in her life. This is saying something, because Maria is damn happy she's the person Natasha Romanova comes home to.

For about an hour now, even the softest of touches have been passing the edge of too much. Steve has bitten through his lip in frustration, and Maria's beginning to get sore in every spot she has. They'd moved onto her riding him, gentle and rhythmic, when her throat gave out. She'd laid herself over him, her nipples brushing over his chest, their lips meeting from time to time, his hands huge and warm and capable over her ass, her clit, cupping her waist. That had been an hour ago, though, and as incandescently hot as Steve is, he's also large.

Of course, Natasha, seeing Maria on him, lingers in the door, like maybe she's not welcome. Maria, who's also kind of tired, doesn't manage to filter her, "Get the fuck in here. It's completely fucked that _I'm_ the one in this relationship who's most assured of her place in it."

Natasha rolls her eyes, but her lips curve in a smile and she says, "Sorry I'm late."

Steve's breathing is uneven as hell, but he still looks straight at Natasha and says, "You weren't supposed—they shouldn't have called you. I don't want to hurt you."

Natasha's already stripping. She peeks her head out the bottom of her shirt and says, "I really would've thought you'd have noticed I'm stronger than I look by now, Rogers."

"You're both impossible," Steve informs them, and bangs his head against the pillow until Natasha slips her hand under it, disallowing the action, and draws him into a kiss. He moans into it, the electricity of attraction between them nearly visible.

She says, "Yeah, we've missed you, too."

*

Natasha goes to the bathroom first and brings back some cool towels, before pulling Maria off Steve, who curls up immediately into a ball of very quiet agony. Natasha kisses his shoulder blade and coaxes him back into lying down. She cleans him up a little before sucking him off again, quickly but with a little bit of finesse, some gentleness to the approach, her hands making little circles on his stomach.

In the thirty-or-so seconds before it gets bad for him again, or, well, worse, she cleans Maria off and wipes her down a bit, fingers tracing where the washcloth have gone, kissing her in greeting. She tells them, "Phil says his science chicks think this will wear off in eight hours or so. They have hopes the serum might speed it along."

"They have absolutely no idea, do they?" Steve asks raggedly, one of his hands searching for theirs. Natasha catches it and latches on, Maria takes his other hand in hers.

"Probably not," Natasha agrees, kissing his forehead. "We're here. We're going to be here. We've got time and we're safe."

Steve retracts his hands, digging his nails into his palms so hard he draws blood. Each of them take a hand back and open it, cleaning the half-moon marks and rubbing his hand in theirs. Maria kisses the center of his palm, the webbing between his fingers and says, "You're not going to hurt us."

Steve looks like he's doing his very best to be a good little soldier and believe her. He's terrible at playing the good little soldier.

*

The problem with Natasha—the big one—is that she doesn't always know her own limits. To some extent, she's been enjoying this, doing her best to keep Steve calm, being utterly in control. Maria misses the second where she switches from tiring but helpful lover into automated-sex-kitten, purring and all, but she _feels_ it the moment after. Steve catches on shortly thereafter, probably from the fact that Maria is drawing Natasha off of him and across the room.

Maria doesn't really want to be touching Natasha, not just then, pretty sure it's not helping. The instant she lets go, Natasha's trying to drape herself over Maria and Maria says, "No, no, not like this."

Steve has come over to stand behind Maria and Maria can sense the way he's trying to make himself smaller than he is. He says, "Sorry, I—"

Maria shakes her head. "This isn't on you. This is on the people who programmed her."

"Yeah, well, the four and a half hours or so of sex probably haven't helped." His tone is stuck between wry and bitter.

Natasha blinks. She curls into herself ever-so-slightly and Maria lets her, backs off. It's several long breaths before she looks up again and says, "So I could maybe use a break."

Maria nods. "That's kind of convenient, since one of us really needs to go get food."

Maria is starving, so Steve's got to be faint from hunger. Behind her, he trembles at the word _food_. Natasha blinks again, more observational this time, and says, "Yeah. I'll—I'll be back."

*

Maria's gotten Steve seated on the ground, which is helpfully cool, their knees touching, when Natasha comes back with a cargo box of food loaded on a dolly more quickly than Maria had really expected. At Maria's look, Natasha says, "Phil's sorry and Mel's practical."

It makes sense. Inside there's pasta with a sauce that has three kinds of meat in it. The smell alone is seductive. Maria's forgotten how well Phil can do basic. There's also salad and fruits and an entire chocolate cake. They camp around it on the floor and hold the containers with one hand, forks with the other.

Between the three of them, they finish all of it, Steve looking mildly ashamed at the portions he takes, but plowing through them all the same. By the time he's finished, he's beyond desperate, and Maria just straddles him, right there, combing her hands through his hair and cooing reassurances while Natasha cleans up behind them.

Steve buries his face in her chest. She's pretty sure he's crying a little, but she's not going to judge. She's sore and she has someone helping her out. Granted, they aren't on the drug, but the drug doesn't protect against chafing and rawness, just makes him have to keep going. She doesn't think it's that, though. Steve has a shockingly high pain tolerance, but very little ability to need others the way he needs them right now.

She strokes the back of his neck. "You're doing well, doing fine."

Natasha comes over then, and it's really Natasha, Maria can tell by the way Natasha kisses her first, rests her forehead against Maria's for a moment before wrapping herself over Steve's back. Steve comes with a shout that's more whimper than anything else, but Maria does him the favor of not thinking in those terms.

She climbs off him carefully, but he still winces. They need salve. She and Natasha share a look, and Natasha says, "I'll be right back. You should get yourselves back to the bed. Floor's cold."

Maria likes how she says it, like it might be one of their bigger worries. She makes herself get to her feet, though, and holds her hands out to Steve, "C'mon, babe."

He lets himself be pulled up.

*

When she returns, Steve is on his side, Maria facing him, their foreheads touching, jerking him off as carefully as she can. Natasha sidles up behind Steve, pouring some lube onto her fingers before handing it over to Maria, along with some topical medication. One hand on his ass, she says, "Steve?"

"Nat?"

"I'm gonna try fingering you, see if we get anywhere that way, okay?"

Steve shivers, although from anticipation or nerves, it's impossible to tell. "Yeah," he says, "yeah."

His breath hitches a little, and then he arches and comes. He even, for a few minutes, is not immediately ready to go again. Natasha kisses his shoulder. "So that worked."

He laughs, more an amused exhalation. Maria says, "I think we're in the countdown."

"Should be the last two hours or so," Natasha agrees, kissing her way up Steve's spine.

Steve laughs again, but this time it's more of a whimper. He's hard again. Maria rolls into him, but he shakes his head. "No, let's…it's not painful yet."

"Good," Maria says, "painful is what we want to avoid."

"Let us worry about what is too much for us, Steven," Natasha murmurs, gently biting at the meat of his bicep.

Steve hesitates for a moment, but then he pulls Maria to him. She pushes him on his back and straddles him before covering him like a blanket.

*

When it's over, it's a strangely immediate off switch. One moment Natasha is slowly writhing against his back, giving him a handjob, the next he's cringing and saying, "Stop, stop, please."

Natasha's got her hands off before he can get to the "please." He's already on to apologizing by that time, "Sorry, sorry."

Maria kisses him to stop the flood, then kisses Natasha, who's looking slightly less than even-keel. Natasha digs her fingers into Maria's hip. There'll be bruises, but she's being careful not to use her fingertips. Maria tugs and pushes and pulls until she's in the middle of the two of them, and brings the covers back up, snuggling down. 

Steve is shivering, and after a moment, able to feel it, Natasha crawls over both of them to huddle into his side. Steve says, "Let's all plan on never doing this again."

Natasha snorts. Maria feels too tired to laugh, but she pats Steve's stomach reassuringly. "Can we wait to make plans until after we've slept?"

Steve tucks her more tightly against him, but she's not so tired she doesn't notice how he doesn't trap her in. He mumbles, "Sounds like a plan."

*

Steve's still superhuman, sex-pollen allergy or no, so he wakes up before either of them and when they start to stir, he gives them water and aspirin. "Clint's here and he made the Director cook breakfast in apology."

"Is it morning?" Natasha asks.

"Not even close," Steve tells her with a smile.

"It's shower time, is what it is," Maria decides. She pulls Steve and Natasha behind her, but it's easy, neither of them are resisting.

Steve insists on cleaning both of them. Maria thinks Natasha would normally decline, but he looks desperate. Every touch he spends on them is infinitely gentle. At one point Maria kisses the webbing between his fingers and says, "We're okay, Steve."

That said, she thinks he'd try to feed her and Natasha if either of them would entertain the notion. Instead he just keeps heaping food on their plates, filling up their water glasses. Natasha knocks her shoulder into his. "We don't all eat like super-soldiers, babe."

Steve flushes a little, but it doesn't stop him from watching over the two of them worriedly. Natasha rolls her eyes. Maria, to her consternation, finds it sweet.

*

Natasha breaks first under Steve's mother-henning, which continues not only for the day that they stay at the Playground to make sure he's going to be all right, but when Steve gets back to their house from another fruitless month of searching for Barnes and Natasha returns from the undercover work she's been pulling for Phil here and there.

Natasha asks, "What if it had been me?"

Since it comes out of essentially nowhere, it's not really surprising that Steve says, "You, um, what?"

"Me with the sex bug. What then? Would you expect me to act like I'd murdered your puppy for the next year, or whatever you were planning?"

Maria considers toning down the harshness for half a second, but they both love Natasha for herself, and besides, it's a fair question.

Steve starts, "That's not—" but he stops at the combined power of their twin facial expressions calling bullshit. He instead settles for a simple, "No."

If he expects that to stall Natasha, he must be sorely disappointed, because she just powers on. "Then why are you acting like that?"

After several minutes, Steve grimaces. "Probably for the same reason I'd do shit like shine Buck's shoes after I'd been sick, when he'd stayed with me. It was his choice, I knew that. But he coulda been out doing things with other kids, kids who weren't coughing up their lungs and instead he'd been sitting in a miserable, cold apartment because he didn't want me to be lonely."

Maria hadn't realized how much she'd feared Steve's answer would encompass their gender until she feels the relief of it just being _Steve_ and his weird lack of knowing he deserves nice things now and then.

It obviously calms Natasha as well, because she says, "Jesus, Rogers."

It gets Steve to laugh, something he hasn't been doing much of with Barnes missing and the whole sex-mania episode. Maria laughs too, it sounds so good. After a second, Natasha gives in and joins them.

Quietly, Maria says, "Something tells me Barnes never thought he was getting the short end of the stick."

Steve looks up at her from under his lashes. Natasha, still laughing, asks, "Are you trying to say that it wasn't all that bad for us? Keeping our incredibly hot boy toy sexually satisfied? Is that what I'm hearing?"

Maria shrugs. "Maybe a little bit of that."

Steve opens his mouth, but Natasha intercepts, "No, we get it. It sucked for you. And that made it less fun for us. And yeah, a little less of a marathon might have been better. But for all that, it was just an accident, and we were safe, and we knew it would end."

Maria points out, "And we had each other."

Natasha nods. "And that."

Maria raises an eyebrow, "Or are you saying it would be a terrible hardship, servicing one of us for hours at a time?"

Steve makes a face at her.

Natasha says, "That settles it: next time, Maria or I get pollinated. It'd be less annoying."

Maria nods. "One hundred percent."


End file.
